LANDSCAPE

RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK

Ecosystems with the capacity to adjust and reassemble in response to significant changes is increasingly important to maintain biodiversity and ecological functions across our landscapes in the context of an uncertain future. Seven key mechanisms exist that contribute to the resilience of ecosystems. When combined, these seven principles embody the most critical considerations when planning for ecological landscape resilience.

ABOUT THE LANDSCAPE

RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK

As human populations expand and our demands on the environment increase, we must wrestle with the question of how we can create and sustain diverse, healthy ecosystems across the landscapes we inhabit. How can we design landscapes that provide meaningful and lasting benefits to both people and wildlife? How can we sustain biodiverse, healthy ecosystems, from our cities to our wildlands, with the capacity to persist and evolve over time?

These questions, always challenging, have become even more so in the face of the rapid environmental changes that are anticipated over the coming century, particularly stressors associated with climate change and development. As we plan for impacts that are likely to be unpredictable or unprecedented, it is increasingly crucial that we support ecosystems flexible enough to adjust and reassemble, maintaining biodiversity and ecological functions in response to significant changes.

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Scroll down to read about the components of an ecologically resilient landscape. The resilience actions focus particularly on lowland and coastal systems at this time and were produced as part of Resilient Silicon Valley.

1.SETTING

1.SETTING

ECOLOGICAL CONTEXT

Ecological assemblies; dominant and rare/unique vegetative communities that distinctively characterize the landscape. Includes landscape legacies -- remnants of former populations, habitats, structures, and processes that can be preserved, built on, or learned from/used as analogs

How the landscape has changed over time – which ecosystem elements have persisted or disappeared, and why

Restoration and management based on an understanding of local history and change over time (e.g., composition and width of former t-zone habitat informs t-zone restoration, understanding of historical composition and distribution of oak woodlands guides re-oaking)

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Restoration and management based on an understanding of potential futuretrajectories and opportunities as infrastructure and landscapes are redesigned

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Restoration and management based on local knowledge of how to sustainably steward landscapes and ecosystems (e.g. TEK on fire and oak management)

CRITICAL RESOURCES

​Resources required for the persistence of desired ecological functions but currently limited within the landscape

Baylands that receive enough sediment, via watershed management or other approaches, to support rapid marsh accretion that will offset sea level rise in a time of declining Bay sediment

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Opportunities for wildlife support on the valley floor (where open space/wildlife habitat is limited) in unconventional areas such as landfills, golf courses, institutional lawns, airports, water treatment basins, etc.

2.PROCESS

SYSTEM DRIVERS

Large-scale forces such as climate change and land use

Floodplains, flood-prone areas, and shoreline areas below Mean Higher High Water are not developed

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Macrotidal aspect of estuary preserved

DISTURBANCE

REGIMES

Expected but unpredictable events, such as fires, floods, and droughts, that shape habitat structure and/or create opportunities for wildlife

Natural and managed disturbances support habitat complexity and diversity (e.g., fire, manual clearing, and grazing in chaparral/scrub/grassland in hills; floods in channel and adjacent riparian areas)

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Natural disturbances are encouraged by land use and zoning that keeps development out of fire and flood prone areas.

Naturalistic magnitude and timing of environmental flows delivered to creeks and across floodplains (e.g., flows that cue germination of sycamores and other native riparian species in appropriate locations, and fish migration, rearing and spawning; avoidance of hydromodification [excessive stormwater flows causing creek erosion])

Reservoir operation (e.g., reservoir redesign or changes flow releases) or dam removal to support sediment transport and flood pulses, as well as reliable perennial reaches

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Maintain high propagule pressure of desired species

3.CONNECTIVITY

LINKED HABITAT PATCHES

Habitat distribution supports different aspects of species life history, allows for species movement and migration, exchange of resources, and gene flow between habitat patches (functional connectivity)

Functional connectivity/permeability between large open space areas (especially among upland habitats and among bayland habitats) connected through corridors/stepping stones.

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Hills to baylands connectivity through streams/riparian corridors and more permeable valley floor (e.g., via urban greening) for wildlife movement, dispersal, and transport of sediment and other materials

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Wetland complexes that provide a critical stopover (in an area otherwise lacking appropriate habitat) for migratory songbirds along the Pacific Flyway

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Linked channels or floodplains at the mouths of certain streams

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Removal of barriers to wildlife movement (e.g., road underpasses and overpasses for wildlife, removal of fencing)

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Connectivity to habitat outside of the landscape (e.g., Pacific Flyway)

SPACE FOR SPECIES AND HABITAT RANGES TO SHIFT

Space for species and habitats to move to as their ranges shift, including accommodation space

Expression of upland habitats across the valley with a gradient of distance from the Bay/coast

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Stream habitats supported across north/south and east/west gradients that account for changes in precipitation and temperature.

LANDSCAPE COHERENCE

Habitats are organized in a way that supports desired processes and ecosystem functions, including the ability of wildlife to navigate within the landscape

Complete ecosystems, with key components and processes intact at the appropriate scale (e.g., connected bayland habitats, including mudflat, marsh, and T-zone, that follow important physical gradients, align with natural processes, and allow system components to interact in ways that better support wildlife)

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Hydrology (flow timing, duration, distribution, magnitude, connectivity, etc.) and water chemistry that maintain natural cues for fish and other aquatic and riparian organisms

Temporal variability in resource availability (e.g., Plants with a diversity of flowering timing to support a diverse suite in pollinators as life history timing changes; wetland areas that pond at different times of year, intermittent and ephemeral streams )

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Native species assemblages conserved in invaded annual grasslands

DIVERSITY IN APPROACH

​Maintaining response diversity and a diversity of life history strategies both within and between species to deal with variability, disturbance, stressors

Presence of population segments that use the landscape in different ways (e.g. rainbow trout/steelhead)

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Species that respond to similar stressors in different ways (e.g. fire re-sprouters vs. fire-germinating seeds)

GENETIC AND PHENOTYPIC VARIABILITY

​Diversity in genes and traits within species

Sufficiently large populations of key species to support genetic and phenotypic diversity (e.g., Bay checkerspot butterfly, steelhead and rainbow trout)

Landscape/streamscape complexity to produce areas that support different species and populations

Key species and habitats established early in areas that are likely to support their persistence but not establishment under future conditions (e.g., oaks established while conditions can still support seedlings, marsh restored while sediment supplies are adequate)

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Availability of seed stores and seedlings for vegetation communities not currently present/abundant but likely to withstand/thrive under future conditions.

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Land use and zoning planned with time horizon for future changes

CROSS SCALE INTERACTIONS

Important interactions that occur across multiple spatial and temporal scales

Short term and fine-scale actions and visions that link to long term and large-scale planning and visions (e.g., preserving remnant habitat near areas likely to be available for restoration in the future)

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A balance of resources in the landscape to account for trade-offs that happen at different spatial and temporal scales (e.g., a landscape needs large habitat patches, but not at the expense of having no habitat redundancy; habitat diversity but not to the extent that specific critical resources cannot be maintained in adequate abundance)

7.PEOPLE

ECOLOGICAL ENGAGEMENT

Place-based and widespread landscape stewardship

Opportunities for people to interact with nature in a way that educates and inspires financial and emotional investment in ecosystems and good stewardship

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People with a deep understanding of place that can inform stewardship strategies

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Coordination and partnerships among planning efforts, agencies, and other stakeholders

LANDSCAPE INTEGRATION

Opportunities to support ecological functions occur across urban, suburban, agricultural and open space lands

Habitat integrated into developed areas in a way that leverages large areas and maintains landscape permeability.

Rain gardens, retention basins and other water infrastructure that links to larger regional wildlife support and physical processes (e.g. leverage recharge in urban and suburban landscape to support groundwater-dependent habitats)

Learning through programs that support research and monitoring needed to make informed decisions and actions

Flexible governance structure and mechanisms for coordination between stakeholders; incorporation of resilience tenets into documents such as general plans

Early detection networks and ways of rapidly responding to catastrophes or novel stressors (e.g. new invasives with high potential for harm, advance planning to improve chances of rapid and ecologically effective response to catastrophes; planning for post-fire restoration/management)